![\"Handball](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/4QV1YO0_AP_11316880_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nNew Zealand handball players are hoping a new international tournament in Wellington will be the start of their journey to a first ever Olympic appearance.<\/p>\n
Seven Oceania nations will contest the IHF Trophy tournament in the capital this week.<\/p>\n
The International Handball Federation is trying to expand its global reach by funding events in the non-traditional handball regions of Oceania, Africa and South America.<\/p>\n
Handball is one of just a couple of sports that New Zealand has never competed at the Olympics in.<\/p>\n
“It’ll take a few years to get to Olympics,” New Zealand women’s coach Cyprien Pesques told RNZ.<\/p>\n
“We have set a goal of going to the Brisbane 2032 Olympics. Because Australia would be already qualified as hosts our aim is to get a qualification for Oceania.”<\/p>\n
Pesques, who moved to New Zealand from France in 2022, said New Zealanders were ideally suited to play handball.<\/p>\n
“Walking in the streets in New Zealand you can see they are tall and strong and they would be amazing. What helps is that New Zealand has the rugby culture which is very strong.<\/p>\n
“Handball is in between rugby, where you need to stop people physically, and basketball, where you are playing as a team to try and score. It is a perfect combination of those two sports.”<\/p>\n
The issue at this stage is numbers with only around 300 people regularly playing the sport in New Zealand and many of those are in schools.<\/p>\n
“People are curious but it’s the next step of giving it a go.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Handball at the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Actionplus\/Photosport.co.nz<\/p>\n
He said for many, handball was the second or third sport that they played, but the New Zealand Handball Federation was trying to find solutions to getting more people involved.<\/p>\n
This week, teams from New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Cook Islands, Kiribati, New Caledonia and Tahiti will compete for the IHF Women’s Nations Trophy.<\/p>\n
At the same time, teams from New Zealand and Australia will contest the New Zealand Club Championship.<\/p>\n
Teams from Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury, and Otago, along with a couple of teams from Australia will contest both men’s and women’s competitions.<\/p>\n
Auckland will host an IHF Oceania youth and junior championships in December.<\/p>\n
Handball was dropped from the Olympic programme after it was first played at the 1936 Olympics, before making a return in 1972.<\/p>\n
Australia is the only Oceania nation to have ever played at the Olympics when they got automatic entry as hosts in Sydney in 2000.<\/p>\n
There are 211 national federations with the sport particularly strong in Europe. European nations have won every Olympic and World Championship title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand handball players are hoping a new international tournament in Wellington will be the start of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-594220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}